11:55pm, Guangzhou, PRC.
In the hotel room that i split with my student's assistant, I'm on the computer playing a song that is nothing short of a chunk of my high school nights grilled to perfection, sitting on a plate in front of me and wafting nostalgic fumes into my face. Hearing the song, she starts a conversation. It goes like this:
"You Happy?"
"Happy? No."
"Homesick? What do you miss?"
"Home. Lover. My Life."
"What can you do?"
"Nothing. Go home."
"My homesickness is worse than yours. I have no freedom."
"..."
The worst part is, it's true. She doesnt. I can up and go at any time if things get too bad and I know i can afford a plane ticket home and still have a cushion of seed money to start over. I can't bitch about anything, because the minute i start i need to pause and remember- homegirl who works more hours doing more stuff than i do makes a tenth of my paycheck. A tenth, not exaggerating at all. And she makes double what everyone else working around me makes. This is not something that I am proud of, or that I agree with. There are a lot of things that I want to say about those two salary related facts, but theyre all going to wait till next time.
Cause Jessie is Le Tired. Sorry for the lack of analysis and comment, the mini-conversation just struck me so deeply that I felt the need to share it.
Love you
Jess
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
mmm.
hey all.
just a big fat piece of LOVE for all you in readership land.
THIS BIG.
give you talks of substance later, promise!
J
just a big fat piece of LOVE for all you in readership land.
THIS BIG.
give you talks of substance later, promise!
J
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Silence
It snowed this morning. So much for spring, and warmth.
I've just gotten to work (at 2 in the afternoon), and am sitting in the dining room of my students house browsing the internet in blessed solitude. The rest of the entourage is still sleeping- from the devastation of clothing, accessories, paperwork and shoes that is currently reigning unchallenged in the rest of the apartment I can only assume that everyone was up until all hours packing. Today we're leaving for a 3 month stint in Shanghai. I can only imagine what a movie star needs to tide herself over for three months away from her walk-in closet and floor to ceiling makeup cabinet. I mean, i've seen the mammoth suitcase that harbors 2 week's worth of necessities and as such i shudder to consider the planning, sorting, and stuffing that comprises preparations for a 3 month sojourn. poor assitants.
anyway, what i'm really trying to get at, what i'd like to give you a glimpse of through the haze of my cyclical musings and convoluted syntax, is how nice some moments of my day are. walking into the apartment at 2 in the afternoon and finding not a bustling scene of assitants, secretaries, and cooks, but rather the thick cottony hush that falls over a space when bodies still within it. On a day like this I will usually walk to the kitchen, brew a mug of warm tea and curl up on the couch with my latest novel- today i'm trading that novel for the novelty and letting you all in on one of the mercifully peaceful moments that occaisionally, unexpectedly, grace my schedule.
So here I sit, the new atmosphere album in my ear buds and a glowing little monitor in my face. Below is what i'm listening to right right now. It reminds of the problems that riddle an alarmingly large percent of the population of the most prosperous nation on the planet. it's what i'm playing at the moment and if you want to play it too, you can.
love you guys
jess
I've just gotten to work (at 2 in the afternoon), and am sitting in the dining room of my students house browsing the internet in blessed solitude. The rest of the entourage is still sleeping- from the devastation of clothing, accessories, paperwork and shoes that is currently reigning unchallenged in the rest of the apartment I can only assume that everyone was up until all hours packing. Today we're leaving for a 3 month stint in Shanghai. I can only imagine what a movie star needs to tide herself over for three months away from her walk-in closet and floor to ceiling makeup cabinet. I mean, i've seen the mammoth suitcase that harbors 2 week's worth of necessities and as such i shudder to consider the planning, sorting, and stuffing that comprises preparations for a 3 month sojourn. poor assitants.
anyway, what i'm really trying to get at, what i'd like to give you a glimpse of through the haze of my cyclical musings and convoluted syntax, is how nice some moments of my day are. walking into the apartment at 2 in the afternoon and finding not a bustling scene of assitants, secretaries, and cooks, but rather the thick cottony hush that falls over a space when bodies still within it. On a day like this I will usually walk to the kitchen, brew a mug of warm tea and curl up on the couch with my latest novel- today i'm trading that novel for the novelty and letting you all in on one of the mercifully peaceful moments that occaisionally, unexpectedly, grace my schedule.
So here I sit, the new atmosphere album in my ear buds and a glowing little monitor in my face. Below is what i'm listening to right right now. It reminds of the problems that riddle an alarmingly large percent of the population of the most prosperous nation on the planet. it's what i'm playing at the moment and if you want to play it too, you can.
love you guys
jess
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Oh my.
Welcome all my friends, to that show that never ends.
We're so glad you could attend, come inside come inside.
The move to Shanghai will be occuring this Sunday. Forgive me for being so, well, scarce of late. Internet connections in the hutong have been, in a word, nonexistant.
But I love you all and when i have time i'll update some more.
J
We're so glad you could attend, come inside come inside.
The move to Shanghai will be occuring this Sunday. Forgive me for being so, well, scarce of late. Internet connections in the hutong have been, in a word, nonexistant.
But I love you all and when i have time i'll update some more.
J
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Here.
I made it to Hong Kong! First city I've been in where I don't speak a word of the primary language. Given, everyone here speaks mandarin and english in addition to Cantonese, but it's still pretty cool to me.
Let's take a look at how i got here. Right now Spring Festival is still going on in China (the two weeks after Chinese New Year are included in Spring Festival, and are the biggest travel days in China), so plane tickets and bus tickets are quite pricey. Even though I had the advantage of being in Southern as opposed to Northern China (helpful when heading South to Hong Kong), plane tickets were still far too expensive. I'll cut through the 5 or so hours of irritated phone calls back and forth to different airline companies, and the different solutions that seemed like godsends but really fell through, and cut to what worked out in the end. So as I've mentioned, I've been in rural rural Southern China shooting, equidistant from two larger cities (equidistant being a four hour drive from both Guilin and Nanning). Luckily for me, one of the women on the shoot has an auntie in Nanning and, overhearing our conversation, told me there is a, GASP, overnight bus from Nanning to HongKong. Thank god. I got on the phone, booked a ticket, and shelpped myself out of bed on Tuesday morning to hitch a ride with some producers heading that way for a meeting. So, after two days of back to back 18 hour shooting I subjected myself to a 4 hour ride from 8-12, sat in a coffee shop from 1-7, and then sat on a bus from 8pm to 9am. Needless to say, I'm tired.
Whats Hong Kong like? Well, it's certainly interesting. The drive in over the bridge is absolutely stunning, high flying bridge over shining water descending into a shiny toy city. The streets here are the kind you see in old movies, cramped and winding and covered in neon street signs that obscure the sky above. I would love to have time to explore it, but I don't think I'm going to- work beckons.
Well, it's getting chilly and I have to pee so i'm going to go and find somewhere to eat, and, hopefully, pee.
Love
Jessie
Let's take a look at how i got here. Right now Spring Festival is still going on in China (the two weeks after Chinese New Year are included in Spring Festival, and are the biggest travel days in China), so plane tickets and bus tickets are quite pricey. Even though I had the advantage of being in Southern as opposed to Northern China (helpful when heading South to Hong Kong), plane tickets were still far too expensive. I'll cut through the 5 or so hours of irritated phone calls back and forth to different airline companies, and the different solutions that seemed like godsends but really fell through, and cut to what worked out in the end. So as I've mentioned, I've been in rural rural Southern China shooting, equidistant from two larger cities (equidistant being a four hour drive from both Guilin and Nanning). Luckily for me, one of the women on the shoot has an auntie in Nanning and, overhearing our conversation, told me there is a, GASP, overnight bus from Nanning to HongKong. Thank god. I got on the phone, booked a ticket, and shelpped myself out of bed on Tuesday morning to hitch a ride with some producers heading that way for a meeting. So, after two days of back to back 18 hour shooting I subjected myself to a 4 hour ride from 8-12, sat in a coffee shop from 1-7, and then sat on a bus from 8pm to 9am. Needless to say, I'm tired.
Whats Hong Kong like? Well, it's certainly interesting. The drive in over the bridge is absolutely stunning, high flying bridge over shining water descending into a shiny toy city. The streets here are the kind you see in old movies, cramped and winding and covered in neon street signs that obscure the sky above. I would love to have time to explore it, but I don't think I'm going to- work beckons.
Well, it's getting chilly and I have to pee so i'm going to go and find somewhere to eat, and, hopefully, pee.
Love
Jessie
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Well isn't this a long post?
Sometimes my world travel exploration is really nothing more than sitting in a coffee shop in a new city, ordering a pot of tea and a plate of fries, and hanging out with my laptop. Really what I'm doing right now i could be doing from any city (well, any city with internet, tea, and fries)and indeed is something that i've done in most cities i've visited. So where is all the exlporation? Is it really travel if i stay within the confines of a familiar bubble, and upon moving, simple pick up the entire thing and shift it?
Ok ok, in all fairness i rarely do what i'm doing right now and the only reason I'm indulging is that I'm only in this city for about 8 hours, I have a heavy bag, and I need to stay in the vicinity of the bus station. But still, these ideas are something to consider, and things that I do often.
I've been thinking a lot about travelling and learning, exploring and discovering and what it all means. Right before i left Hawaii this last time i began to flirt with the ideas of exploring and travelling at home, delving deeper into the essences of everyday events as opposed to seeking the (sometimes) superficial knowledge of 'exciting' 'exotic' things. To say it another way, I've been contemplating the differences between knowing a lot about a little instead of a little about a lot. Now that I'm travelling more and more, indeed more than I ever thought I would, I find myself revisiting this topic more and more,and as I ponder my actions and their incentives I have been rolling three quotes over in my head. The first one is by Proust, something that lodged itself in my head incorrectly and, thanks to a conversation with a friend, i recently revisited and corrected my memory of. it goes like this:
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees. -Marcel Proust
This is the first quote that I encountered along the lines re-discovering the old, and though it does not quite get to the roots of what i've been mulling over, i still think it is worth comment and it is something that I've thought about at different stages in my life. It's not only about rediscovering your daily life but also about acknowledging that we all see the world around us through certain filters, be they related to culture, age, sex, orientation, or something as simple as the differences between a right handed person's experiences and left handed person's. It is about not only becoming more familiar with your own reality but giving space to and exploring the realities of those around you. Very interesting.
The next quote also skirts around the edges of my main issue a bit, but is definately relevant to the way that i've been living my life the past few months. Those of you've that I've been talking to regularly know that in this particular branch of the tree that is my life (aha, i'm so poetic.) I've encountered something entirely foreign and rather challenging- i want to go home. I find myself pining for and lusting after a place that I've already been. Novel. For someone who has always been sniffing around the next plane ticket, it's an interesting and, blessedly, welcome change. It is a development that comes at a rather ironic and also quite challenging time, considering the fact that I've finally gotten myself into a lucrative and comfortable groove and indeed will not be returning home for a matter of months. Some of you may scoff at 'months' and advise me that it is but a blip in the saga of my far reaching life, but when a person hasnt lived in one place for more than 3 months in over two years time she begins to relate to time in different ways that most people. A month or two here or there is a very different concept in the world of Jessie than it is in the world of most people. Thusly, this interesting dilemma I find myself in is rather ironic, and though irksome and irritating, i must admit it is a predicament i find myself glad to be in. I look forward to arriving home and finally living without the constant itch of wanderlust invading my thoughts and senses. This next quote plays upon this theme,revolves around ideas of what exactly it is to use the time you have at your discretion in a truly useful manner. I know that I have been guilty of looking past the present in attempts to grasp at the future. It is something that though I am aware of, and was aware of while living in Hawaii, I find extremely difficult to stop- especially now that I feel I've found what I really truly want (to return home). I identify very strongly with this quote, and find that it is a rather good example of the way that I have not only been abusing my travel experiences recently but is also analogous to the way I misused a lot of my last respite period at home. It is from the book Siddartha, and was written as follows:
“Are you not also a seeker of the right path?”
There was a smile in Siddhartha’s old eyes as he said: “Do you call yourself a seeker, 0' venerable one, you who are already advanced in years and wear the robe of Gotama’s monks.”
“I am indeed old,” said Govinda, “but I have never ceased seeking. I will never cease seeking. That seems to be my destiny. It seems to me that you also have sought. Will you talk to me a little about it, friend?”
Siddhartha said: “What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
“How is that?” asked Govinda.
“When someone is seeking,” said Siddhartha, “it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, 0' worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Very poignant, that quote. I mull over it quite a bit.
The third quote speaks directly to the concepts that have been most recently on my mind, and is by TS Eliot, a man whose writing i have never really taken the time to read. Interestingly enough, I just learned from Wikipedia that his birthday is 100 years and two days after my own. Odd. Anyway, onto the quote that I'm trying to introduce. In addition to chastising myself for wasting my time traveling being preoccupied with thoughts of home (a mirror of the time I spent at home fantasizing about travelling) I've been consdering where it is (spiritually speaking) all of this travelling is going to drop me off. I'll leave it at that for now and let you go ahead and read the quote.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, "Little Gidding" (from the last of his Four Quartets)
On a similar, or unrelated note (depending on how you look at it) a song that was popular when i was in high is for some reason all of the sudden all the rage in southern china. and its playing in the coffee shop over my fries, tea, and L word. Sigh.
This post was written to the strains of Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield, a song that finds itself of late on constant repeat in the life of one Jessie Marie.
Love
J
Ok ok, in all fairness i rarely do what i'm doing right now and the only reason I'm indulging is that I'm only in this city for about 8 hours, I have a heavy bag, and I need to stay in the vicinity of the bus station. But still, these ideas are something to consider, and things that I do often.
I've been thinking a lot about travelling and learning, exploring and discovering and what it all means. Right before i left Hawaii this last time i began to flirt with the ideas of exploring and travelling at home, delving deeper into the essences of everyday events as opposed to seeking the (sometimes) superficial knowledge of 'exciting' 'exotic' things. To say it another way, I've been contemplating the differences between knowing a lot about a little instead of a little about a lot. Now that I'm travelling more and more, indeed more than I ever thought I would, I find myself revisiting this topic more and more,and as I ponder my actions and their incentives I have been rolling three quotes over in my head. The first one is by Proust, something that lodged itself in my head incorrectly and, thanks to a conversation with a friend, i recently revisited and corrected my memory of. it goes like this:
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees. -Marcel Proust
This is the first quote that I encountered along the lines re-discovering the old, and though it does not quite get to the roots of what i've been mulling over, i still think it is worth comment and it is something that I've thought about at different stages in my life. It's not only about rediscovering your daily life but also about acknowledging that we all see the world around us through certain filters, be they related to culture, age, sex, orientation, or something as simple as the differences between a right handed person's experiences and left handed person's. It is about not only becoming more familiar with your own reality but giving space to and exploring the realities of those around you. Very interesting.
The next quote also skirts around the edges of my main issue a bit, but is definately relevant to the way that i've been living my life the past few months. Those of you've that I've been talking to regularly know that in this particular branch of the tree that is my life (aha, i'm so poetic.) I've encountered something entirely foreign and rather challenging- i want to go home. I find myself pining for and lusting after a place that I've already been. Novel. For someone who has always been sniffing around the next plane ticket, it's an interesting and, blessedly, welcome change. It is a development that comes at a rather ironic and also quite challenging time, considering the fact that I've finally gotten myself into a lucrative and comfortable groove and indeed will not be returning home for a matter of months. Some of you may scoff at 'months' and advise me that it is but a blip in the saga of my far reaching life, but when a person hasnt lived in one place for more than 3 months in over two years time she begins to relate to time in different ways that most people. A month or two here or there is a very different concept in the world of Jessie than it is in the world of most people. Thusly, this interesting dilemma I find myself in is rather ironic, and though irksome and irritating, i must admit it is a predicament i find myself glad to be in. I look forward to arriving home and finally living without the constant itch of wanderlust invading my thoughts and senses. This next quote plays upon this theme,revolves around ideas of what exactly it is to use the time you have at your discretion in a truly useful manner. I know that I have been guilty of looking past the present in attempts to grasp at the future. It is something that though I am aware of, and was aware of while living in Hawaii, I find extremely difficult to stop- especially now that I feel I've found what I really truly want (to return home). I identify very strongly with this quote, and find that it is a rather good example of the way that I have not only been abusing my travel experiences recently but is also analogous to the way I misused a lot of my last respite period at home. It is from the book Siddartha, and was written as follows:
“Are you not also a seeker of the right path?”
There was a smile in Siddhartha’s old eyes as he said: “Do you call yourself a seeker, 0' venerable one, you who are already advanced in years and wear the robe of Gotama’s monks.”
“I am indeed old,” said Govinda, “but I have never ceased seeking. I will never cease seeking. That seems to be my destiny. It seems to me that you also have sought. Will you talk to me a little about it, friend?”
Siddhartha said: “What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
“How is that?” asked Govinda.
“When someone is seeking,” said Siddhartha, “it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, 0' worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Very poignant, that quote. I mull over it quite a bit.
The third quote speaks directly to the concepts that have been most recently on my mind, and is by TS Eliot, a man whose writing i have never really taken the time to read. Interestingly enough, I just learned from Wikipedia that his birthday is 100 years and two days after my own. Odd. Anyway, onto the quote that I'm trying to introduce. In addition to chastising myself for wasting my time traveling being preoccupied with thoughts of home (a mirror of the time I spent at home fantasizing about travelling) I've been consdering where it is (spiritually speaking) all of this travelling is going to drop me off. I'll leave it at that for now and let you go ahead and read the quote.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, "Little Gidding" (from the last of his Four Quartets)
On a similar, or unrelated note (depending on how you look at it) a song that was popular when i was in high is for some reason all of the sudden all the rage in southern china. and its playing in the coffee shop over my fries, tea, and L word. Sigh.
This post was written to the strains of Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield, a song that finds itself of late on constant repeat in the life of one Jessie Marie.
Love
J
Monday, February 2, 2009
lovely day
So I'm sitting again in the business center of this hotel, staring out the curtains at the dreary sky and writing a small love note to all you out there in readerland.
the weather, beauteous though it may be, is apparently not condusive for shooting a movie. the fog won't lift off the mountains and the droplets won't stay in the clouds. i mean, i love it, but the film crew is less thrilled. i'm still trying to book my flight to hong kong, which is proving to be difficult. we're in a rather secluded area in southern china and apparently the only two airports with international flights are equidistant from our current location- about a three hour drive. and, with the rain, no one is sure if we're going to stay and wait it out or opt to move to the next location (a beach!) and then return here in a week or so to wrap up. so i don't know where we'll be and which airport to fly out of. but enough of my griping, cause i'm sure i'll figure it out. or, i might get kicked out of country and banned from returning for overstaying my visa. those are both options.
what else? like i said, when i get to hong kong i'll send out a few more emails and replies- with 12-18 hour days it's a little hard to drag myself to the business center to sit in front of the monitor. lately it's sleep vs. send emails, run vs. send emails, or buy fruit vs. send emails. i think you guys can all guess what wins out in most of those battles. and if you cant, you can use your collective inboxs as a clue.
unless youre my mom. she still gets emails. right mom? right.
anywho, its beautiful outside, so im going to go frolic next to the lake in the fog. fog fog. i love fog. mist! mist is better. this is mist, not fog. mmm, mist.
love
jessie
the weather, beauteous though it may be, is apparently not condusive for shooting a movie. the fog won't lift off the mountains and the droplets won't stay in the clouds. i mean, i love it, but the film crew is less thrilled. i'm still trying to book my flight to hong kong, which is proving to be difficult. we're in a rather secluded area in southern china and apparently the only two airports with international flights are equidistant from our current location- about a three hour drive. and, with the rain, no one is sure if we're going to stay and wait it out or opt to move to the next location (a beach!) and then return here in a week or so to wrap up. so i don't know where we'll be and which airport to fly out of. but enough of my griping, cause i'm sure i'll figure it out. or, i might get kicked out of country and banned from returning for overstaying my visa. those are both options.
what else? like i said, when i get to hong kong i'll send out a few more emails and replies- with 12-18 hour days it's a little hard to drag myself to the business center to sit in front of the monitor. lately it's sleep vs. send emails, run vs. send emails, or buy fruit vs. send emails. i think you guys can all guess what wins out in most of those battles. and if you cant, you can use your collective inboxs as a clue.
unless youre my mom. she still gets emails. right mom? right.
anywho, its beautiful outside, so im going to go frolic next to the lake in the fog. fog fog. i love fog. mist! mist is better. this is mist, not fog. mmm, mist.
love
jessie
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